Don't mess with taxes?

IT didn't take long. Just a few short weeks after the seating of the new state Legislature, its supermajority of Democratic representatives is already lusting after the revenue potential of tinkering with Proposition 13.

Prop. 13, you will surely recall, is the 35-year-old law that keeps a hard check on property taxes in California. This landmark law has been credited and blamed from everything to preserving the middle class to ruining government.

Public support of the law remains strong enough that no elected official who wants to remain in public service would gut the residential portion - which only allows a 2 percent increase a year on property taxes and reassessment of the base value only when a property is sold.

So one potential source of reform is with the commercial portion. One legislator, Tom Ammiano from Northern California, has already come up with a proposal to close a loophole that allows corporations to sidestep reassessments on properties they purchase. Others said they are considering a "split roll" property tax, in which commercial properties would be reassessed annually or semiannually according to their market value.

Two other legislators are aiming at lowering the Prop. 13 threshold for parcel taxes.

What do you think?

Are there areas of Prop. 13 that ought to be revisited or redone? Has it kept taxes too low in California. Is a split-roll tax for commercial property fair? Should parcel taxes for schools and libraries be subjected to the same simple majority formula as other taxes?

Or should the Legislature simply keep its mitts off the Prop. 13 protections?

Post your responses in the comments section on our website or email them to opinion@langnews.com. Please include your full name, the community or city in which you live and a daytime phone number for verification (we won't print that). We'll publish the responses online and print as many of them as we can in the paper next Sunday.